Friday, March 25, 2011

I got to know Lanford Wilson, who died yesterday at 73, in the late 1980s when we both were taking the waters at the Lion's Head. He was bright, witty in a down-home way, with southern Missouri Ozark roots, and kind. Through him I met Tanya Berezin, artistic director of Circle Repertory Company, which occupied a playhouse across Sheridan Square from the Head. Through my introduction to Tanya I got involved with Circle Rep, serving on the board of their fund-raising group. I also got to meet some other playwrights, including Craig Lucas, Athol Fugard, A.R. "Pete" Gurney, and Terence McNally, and to see their plays. I saw Lanford's Burn This and Craig's Prelude to a Kiss on Broadway, Lanford's Redwood Curtain in a special performance while it was still in development, and a dramatic reading of his earlier play The Hot L Baltimore. I'll always be grateful to Lanford for this introduction to the world of theater.

Lanford had an amazing ability to enter the heads of different sorts of people and to write convincing dialogue for them. Seeing his plays made me empathize with characters I couldn't have imagined liking. His vision was unsparing, but ultimately forgiving, if not optimistic.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The video above consists of scenes from the screen adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1967), starring Ms. Taylor and her twice husband Richard Burton. Thanks to Valley TaylorBurton for the clip.

About the time she was going through her third or fourth divorce, Billy Graham was preaching to a stadium crowd and said he didn't think people should condemn her, but instead should pray for her. A man's voice came from somewhere in the upper deck: "I've been praying for her for years, and I haven't gotten her yet!"

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Luis Castillo, released by the Mets, has been picked up by the Phillies. Will he go from catcalls at Citi Field to cheers at Citizens Bank Park? This certainly provides another chance to test the "curse of the ex-Met" theory.

Update: The other shoe drops, as Oliver Perez gets his walking papers, this after walking too many batters and tossing too many gopher balls (two in his last outing with the Mets on Sunday). This means that the cash-strapped Mets have eaten $18 million ($6 million to Castillo and $12 million to Perez) in contractual obligations so far this season.

Is there really such a thing as the curse of the ex-Met? I dunno. I think I heard someone use that phrase years ago at the Lion's Head, and it's stuck with me. I certainly don't have any statistical evidence to back it up. Still, somewhere in the back alleys of my brain, probably in the vicinity of the amygdala, resides the notion that, whenever a Mets player is traded, released, or lost to free agency, his performance, especially against his old team, improves dramatically (and conversely, whenever a veteran player is acquired by the Mets, his stats go south). These are falsifiable propositions, and I'm sure there is someone out there who can produce counterexamples. Of course, I will then argue that you've found an exception that proves the rule.

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About Me

I narrowly missed being that rara avis for my generation, a native Floridian, when the U.S. Army closed its hospital in Tallahassee, shortly before my mother’s due date. She went home, and I was born in a city renowned in Vaudeville humor: Altoona, Pennsylvania. In that chilly March of 1946, the first sound to reach my infant ears from outside the hospital walls was likely the shriek of a steam locomotive’s whistle. This could explain my lifelong love of trains. Four surface crossings of the Atlantic in childhood also led to fascination with ships and the sea.

My father was in the military, so our family (I was an only child) went from place to place often in my early years. I was in England from the ages of five to eight (the first newspaper headline I recall reading is “KING DIES”; the King in question being George VI, father of Elizabeth II) and began my formal education in a rural county council (what we call “public”) school, where I probably escaped having my bottom caned only because the headmistress feared creating an international incident. Other places where I lived while growing up were Miami, San Antonio, Cheyenne, the Florida panhandle and Tampa.

I graduated from the University of South Florida (B.A., 1967) and Harvard Law School (J.D., 1970). After that, apart from two years' duty in the U.S. Army, I practiced law in New York City. I worked in law firms and as in-house counsel, and served on the boards of directors of an insurer and a reinsurer. On a volunteer basis I now write for Brooklyn Heights Blog and the Brooklyn Bugle, and also publish my own blog, Self-Absorbed Boomer, which has been described as "relentlessly eclectic." In 1991, I married Martha Foley, an historian and archivist. We live in Brooklyn Heights. Our daughter, Elizabeth Cordelia Scales, also lives in Brooklyn.